_Under the caption "Moral Wastage of the German Army," the review
continues:_
The material losses of the German Army have corresponded with a moral
wastage which it is interesting and possible to follow, both from the
interrogation of prisoners and the pocketbooks and letters seized upon
them or on the killed.
At the beginning of the war the entire German Army, as was natural, was
animated by an unshakable faith in the military superiority of the
empire. It lived on the recollections of 1870, and on those of the long
years of peace, during which all the powers which had to do with Germany
displayed toward her a spirit of conciliation and patience which might
pass for weakness.
The first prisoners we took in August showed themselves wholly
indifferent to the reverses of the German Army. They were sincerely and
profoundly convinced that, if the German Army retired, it was in virtue
of a preconceived plan, and that our successes would lead to nothing.
The events at the end of August were calculated to strengthen this
contention in the minds of the German soldiers.
The strategic retreat of the French Army, the facility with which the
German armies were able to advance from Aug. 25 to Sept. 5, gave our
adversaries a feeling of absolute and final superiority, which
manifested itself at that time by all the statements gleaned and all the
documents seized.
At the moment of the battle of the Marne the first impression was one of
failure of comprehension and of stupor. A great number of German
soldiers, notably those who fell into our hands during the first days of
that battle, believed fully, as at the end of August, that the retreat
they were ordered to make was only a means of luring us into a trap.
German military opinion was suddenly converted when the soldiers saw
that this retreat continued, and that it was being carried out in
disorder, under conditions which left no doubt as to its cause and its
extent.
This time it was really a defeat, and a defeat aggravated by the absence
of regular supplies and by the physical and moral depression which was
the result. The severity of the losses sustained, the overpowering
effects of the French artillery, began from this moment to be noted in
the German pocketbooks with veritable terror. Hope revived, however, at
the end of some weeks, and there is to be found in the letters of
soldiers and officers the announcement of "a great movement" which is
being prepared, and which is to lead the German armies anew as far as
Paris.